Sunday, March 30, 2014

StevePavlina.com Personal Development Insights Newsletter Issue #62 - March 26, 2014

StevePavlina.com Personal Development Insights Newsletter

Issue #62 - March 26, 2014 - www.StevePavlina.com

Here's an update on a new Mindfest from Learning Strategies, plus some info on how to significantly improve your mental performance...

Prime Your Brain for a Permanent Performance Gain (in a Few Minutes)

If you haven't read my latest blog post about priming your brain for increased performance, I highly encourage you to do so. Some readers have told me that this is the best information I've shared in recent years.

The article will teach you how to make some simple changes to your surroundings in just a few minutes to create a permanent improvement in your mental performance. It's a long article, most of which serves to explain why this simple method works so well, but these ideas can really make a difference in your life. I've been getting great results with this approach, and there are many ways to apply it for free, so you don't even have to spend money on it. Please set aside some time to read it. You'll be glad you did.

At the end of this newsletter, there's a second, much shorter article about another way to train your brain for improved performance. I don't think it matters which article you read first, but if you read both of them, you'll surely gain some useful insights on how to take charge of the powerful supercomputer inside your skull.

And remember, all of my articles and newsletters are uncopyrighted, so please feel free to share them as much as you'd like. You can republish them on your own website, translate them, and even wrap them into products and sell them if you want. No need to pay me. Just spread the ideas, so other people can benefit from them. :)

Free Diamond Feng Shui Fest from Learning Strategies

Learning Strategies is hosting another free Mindfest starting on April 14. This Mindfest is about feng shui, which is the practice of modifying your home and workspace to create a positive and supportive relationship with you.

I'm not really into the idea that chi is flowing through my home, which is a big part of feng shui. However, I do find the practical application side of feng shui to be immensely helpful. It's all about creating harmonious physical spaces. Feng shui aligns beautiful with the information I shared in the two brain articles I mentioned above. In my view, good feng shui is basically a form of priming. When a physical space is properly laid out, the mental benefit is that it's easy to relax, focus, and concentrate within that space.

I suggest reading the two articles I mentioned earlier, and then if you desire to more extensive improvements to your home and workspace, you can sign up for the Diamond Feng Shui Fest to learn how.

This Mindfest is free and streams over six days (April 14-19), so you can listen to the whole thing during your lunch breaks if you'd like. Learning Strategies also sells the recordings for their Mindfests afterwards, usually with a bunch of bonuses included. So if you like it, you can get a copy to keep.

If this interests you, here's the link to sign up: Diamond Feng Shui Fest. Again, it's totally free.

How to Train Your Brain for Better Performance

One of the biggest problems I see people suffering from is that they waste their precious brainpower on thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that cannot possibly help them move closer to their desires.

Worrying is a waste of resources. Depression is a waste of resources. Making excuses is a waste of resources. People know this, yet they still invest their brainpower in these pointless patterns.

I think the main reason is that these people haven't trained their brains for good behavior. After slacking off for so many years, these brains behave like untrained dogs, peeing on the carpet and chewing up the furniture. And their owners allow that to continue. Consequently, they suffer for it -- in their finances, their relationships, their health, etc. An untrained brain frequently delivers weak results. Who's responsible for this? The owner of course.

When you catch your brain doing something you don't consciously like, such as worrying needlessly, do you let it continue? That's a mistake unless you want to encourage more of the same. Since worrying is largely pointless and unproductive, it makes more sense to tell your brain know that this behavior is unacceptable, and immediately set it going in a different direction.

You can start by getting your brain's attention and telling it to stop. When you catch your brain doing something you dislike, I encourage you to actually say aloud:

No, you don't do that. That's wrong. Cut that out immediately.

Then quickly instruct your brain on what you want it to do instead:

Drop the circular thinking. We have a problem to solve here, so solve it in a way that satisfies me. Here are the constraints. ... Here's what we know so far about the desired outcome. ... Now apply your best efforts to compute an optimal or near-optimal solution. I know you're brilliant. That's a given. Put those 100 billion neurons to good use, and devise a solution to this challenge that satisfies my criteria. Go work on that now, and bring it to my conscious attention when you have something worthy of presenting.

You'd be surprised at how well this works.

If your brain is wasting its energy on worry, fear, anger, loneliness, circular thinking, or distraction, perhaps you haven't given your subconscious mind a problem or task worthy of its status. After all, it's an amazingly powerful supercomputer. Your brain craves a good challenge. It's well adapted for creative problem solving. So give it a respectable conundrum to chew on behind the scenes. Put those 100 billion neurons to good use. Otherwise, don't be surprised if it behaves like a dog that's been ignored for too long, doing whatever it can to get your attention.

You may not be able to consciously control your brain at all times, but you can definitely take charge of it on certain occasions, such as when you catch it doing something self-destructive.

Don't let a poorly trained brain chew up your mental furniture. When it misbehaves, give it some tough love. Be firm with it. Don't just beat it up for failing to satisfy you. Then tell your brain -- as clearly as possible -- what you want it to do instead. Train it for good behavior.

A well-trained brain is like a well-trained dog. Instead of fighting with your brain or getting frustrated with its erratic behavior, you can relax, enjoy, and appreciate its presence in your life. You can receive its gifts.

Keep the training going. When your brain presents a solution to a problem, give it feedback. Did it satisfy your criteria? Did it come up with an intelligent option for you?

When your brain comes up with an intelligent solution that you really like, lavish praise on it. Say to it:

Wow! That's brilliant. I love this. You did a great job! This is EXACTLY what I wanted to see. You're good, you!

Do this to such a degree that you feel some positive emotions. Reward your brain for doing what you consciously want it to do. Brilliant! Nicely done! You did it!

What has your brain computed for you recently? Do you praise it when it does a good job? Or do you take it for granted? What happens when you take another person for granted? Don't they become lazier and more rebellious? Is that how your brain has been behaving lately?

What if your brain doesn't perform as well as you would have liked? Tell it what it did right and what it did wrong and how you'd like it to adjust. Send it back to rework its solution. Say something like this:

No, you came up with another idea that could earn us $X. I already know that you know how to do that. I asked you to identify a $5X opportunity. I don't see how this one is going to accomplish that. Find a way to earn $5X in one chunk. One project. One idea. I know we haven't done that before, but I believe you're smart enough to figure it out. We know its possible, so there must be a way to do it. If you have to replace some old limiting beliefs to accomplish this, you have permission to do that. But you don't have permission to violate my values. Your solution must still be honest, honorable, and ethical no matter what. Now go figure this out. I know you can do it.

Keep your brain busy solving problems that align with your goals. Your brain loves this. A challenge lights it up. It's very good at this. But you must train and reward it properly.

It may seem a little strange to relate to your brain as a separate entity that you must train to perform better, but is this really so strange? Athletes treat their muscles as entities to be trained, and that approach works well for them. Would you rather be a mental athlete with a well-trained brain... or a mental couch potato with an untrained one?

In the past I used to expend a lot of effort trying to solve problems consciously. Now my approach is more like a co-creative partnership between my conscious mind and my subconscious. I delegate many tasks to my subconscious mind these days, including writing. My conscious mind is normally very relaxed while I'm writing. My subconscious basically communicates directly with my fingers, telling them what to type. I don't always know what words and sentences are about to show up on the screen. Sometimes my conscious mind feels more like it's reading than writing. This works for me because I've spent years training my brain to write. So now I can simply tell my brain to write a new article, and it will take care of that for me while my conscious mind relaxes. It's essentially the same idea as teaching a dog to fetch a ball; the dog chases the ball automatically because that's what it's been trained to do. The dog doesn't have to think about how to do it. The dog just does it.

In your head you have this amazing supercomputer that you can assign any task or problem to, and it can compute a solution in the background, bringing it to your conscious attention when it's done. This works for business challenges, financial challenges, social challenges, and relationship challenges.

Try this for yourself, and see how well it works for you. If you get into the habit of treating your brain like a brilliant supercomputer, albeit one that requires supervision and training, I think you'll like the results. Your brain is surely capable of creating an abundant, happy, and fulfilling life for you.

You can have what you desire. Your brain is brilliant. Instruct it clearly and firmly. And reward and adjust its behavior as needed.

Please follow me on Twitter and Google+ for inspirational messages and quick updates.

Steve Recommends

Here are my recommendations for products and services that I've personally reviewed and which I believe can help you on your personal growth journey. This is a very short list since it only includes my top picks.

Site Build It! - Build an income-generating website.
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes.
PhotoReading - Read books 3x faster (discounted for my readers).
Paraliminals - Accelerate your personal growth (discounted for my readers).
Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks.
Sedona Method - Free Audio - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
The Journal - Keep a secure journal on your PC.
Life on Purpose - Discover your life purpose.

Until next time, live consciously!

This newsletter is uncopyrighted. Feel free to share it, such as by forwarding it to friends or by posting it on your blog.
www.StevePavlina.com

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Steve Pavlina Personal Development Insights Newsletter - Issue #61 - February 17, 2014

StevePavlina.com Personal Development Insights Newsletter

Issue #61 - February 17, 2014 - www.StevePavlina.com

Here's an update on Ryan Eliason's free webinar series for income-seeking lightworkers, plus a new article on epigenetics and personal growth...

Free Webinar Series to Help Lightworkers Earn More Money

In the last issue, I told you about Ryan Eliason's free webinar series for people who want to become socially conscious entrepreneurs. This series has been a HUGE hit with more than 60,000 people signed up for it.

The webinars continue this week, so if you missed last week's webinars, don't worry. You can still catch the replays for a short time. It's a good idea to sign up now since these freebies will soon be taken offline.

Who is this for?

These webinars are specifically for lightworkers -- people who want to have a positive impact on the world -- particularly lightworkers who'd like to create a positive impact through the vehicle of business and enjoy plenty of abundance in the process. So if you think that all do-gooders should be perpetually broke, or if you just want money at all costs no matter how evil you have to be, then this series isn't for you. Darkworkers will have to go elsewhere.

Why is Ryan giving away so much for free?

Ryan started out in the non-profit space many years with our mutual friend Ocean Robbins. The early days of that work involved great service and contribution to humanity, but they were also a financial struggle, with Ryan and Ocean having to eat donated food just to keep going. After those early experiences, Ocean stayed in the non-profit realm and learned how to make it work financially, while Ryan became inspired to do transformational work through the vehicle of running a for-profit business.

Now Ryan teaches other people how to do great work in the world AND enjoy plenty of financial abundance doing it. Ryan believes as I do that service and wealth can be the best of friends, and it's largely limiting beliefs that convince us we can only have one or the other.

Ryan's webinars are part inspiration, part overcoming blocks, and part practical how-to steps. They'll get you off to a great start on the path of serving others in a big way AND help you create a strong income AND enjoy an abundant lifestyle.

This webinar series is free, so you have no excuses. If you devour all the free lessons (10+ hours of material, including real-world case studies), and you still want more, he has a paid coaching program that goes on for months. That will take you even deeper into the process of developing and launching your own successful lightworker business -- or intelligently upgrading the business you already have.

I think you'll find that Ryan's lessons are strongly aligned with what I've been teaching for years as well. Ryan is also super generous with his free content, so you're going to get a lot of practical knowledge and inspiration from the free materials even if you never pay him for further lessons and coaching.

So if you're tired of trying unsuccessfully to make money doing what you love, maybe it's time to speed things along and create a quantum leap for yourself. Maybe it's time you stop sleeping on the sidelines and really get moving -- and enjoy the great rewards that come from great service.

If this interests you, go sign up for the free webinars right now, and start watching them. Get caught up fast, and tune into the upcoming webinars live, so you can participate more actively. You can sign up here:

RSVP Here (only takes 30 seconds)

Here's what this free training series covers...

how to build a successful business rooted in profound service
thinking bigger (how to stop playing so small)
strategizing for your business
making the contribution you're capable of
10 real life examples and case studies for you to learn from
conscious marketing
client attraction
generating a mindset for success
time management skills to dramatically increase your focus and productivity

And again... the training is free.

To make sure you get the most out of his training, you'll also get two extra gifts when you register:

Gift #1 - Ryan's New Book

The 10 Best Ways To Get Paid for Changing The World
How To Make A Lucrative Career Out of Profound Service

Gift #2 - Client Attraction and Enrollment Mind Map

Ryan's Mind Map will help you improve your business strategy, so you can make better decisions that produce results.

The 2014 Visionary Entrepreneur Empowerment Training - Free

Stop giving yourself credit for great ideas that you aren't actually implementing. Let your gains be the results you create, both for yourself and others. Just calling yourself a do-gooder, a lightworker, or an environmentalist means nothing if you aren't having a measurable impact in the real world. Are you going to move forward on this now, or would you rather drag your feet for another year?

It will take you only 30 seconds to register, and it might just change your life. :)

Abundance for Life Mindfest - Free Online Event March 3-7

Learning Strategies is running another one of their popular Mindfests only two weeks from now. This one is called Abundance for Life. The focus of this 5-day event is to help you take action on the personal growth knowledge you've already gained. Put your best lessons into real-world practice to create positive forward momentum.

This Mindfest will guide you through some processes and exercises to help you get unblocked, get motivated, and get moving. This is a great way to help you take action on the lessons you learn from Ryan's free webinar series.

It's totally free too. Sign up for it here, so you'll get an email reminder when it starts: Abundance for Life.

Epigenetics and Personal Growth

According to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine titled "The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years," if a friend, family member, or spouse becomes obese, your chances of obesity increase by up to 57%. In other words there's a significant social aspect to obesity. For good or ill, we influence each other.

Partly this may be due to behavioral influences. Eating and exercise habits can be contagious. Other studies have confirmed that eating with obese people significantly increases the number of calories you're likely to eat too. And as you might guess, the opposite happens if you eat with skinny people.

However, epigenetics may play a role here as well. This means that being around obese people can actually influence your own genetic expression.

While your DNA is fixed at birth, the way your DNA-encoded genes are expressed or inhibited is not fixed and can be affected by environmental influences.

You may have a gene that encourages you to store more body fat, for instance, but based on your environment, that particular gene's expression may be chemically blocked. The genes you have in your DNA aren't always switched on. They can be chemically switched off. One pathway in which this happens is that certain chemicals can bond with your DNA. This is like putting a sticker over part of your DNA, thereby preventing that part of your DNA from expressing itself.

In fact, the particular switch settings for certain genes can be inherited too, passed on for several generations. So you may have inherited some of your parents' or grandparents' chemical blocking elements in addition to inheriting some of their DNA.

Does this mean you should avoid people who seem like they may be expressing certain genes you'd rather not express? Well... that is one option I suppose, but it may not be very practical or compassionate.

It does seem a wise idea to choose your social connections carefully, however, both for their behavioral influences as well as their potential epigenetic influences. This is largely common sense if you're into personal growth. You've probably already seen how a shift in your social circle can greatly influence your lifestyle and results.

This also points to doing your best to be a positive influence on your own social network. Realize that your results aren't just about you. You're going to influence others as well. If you smoke, for instance, you're not just killing yourself -- you're damaging the health of others, not only through the smoke but also by encouraging smoking behavior and by triggering smoking-related genetic expression in others.

If you slack off on positive habits and express destructive ones, you're dragging everyone else down. Don't do that. Keep your personal standards high, both for your good and the good of others. And when you slip, do your best to have your lapses in private. Some degree of shame is actually a good thing here. By keeping your bad habits to yourself, you avoid becoming such a bad influence on others. Don't drag other people down with you. A bad habit that becomes a social one is harder to overcome.

Finally, this points to the strategy of immersion. If you want to help yourself grow and improve, immerse yourself in an environment of other people who will elevate your standards. If you want to be physically fitter, immerse yourself in an environment of very fit people. If you want to be mentally sharper, immerse yourself in an environment of the brightest and most focused people you can find. If you're having trouble staying focused and you succumb to distractions easily, take a good look at your social circle, including the people you connect with online. It's a safe bet you're hanging out with people who are exuding similar qualities.

A good rule of thumb is to assume that your current social circle will be permanent if you don't change it today. This helps you overcome the delusional thinking that your network will somehow improve on its own without conscious action. Usually the opposite is true -- social networks have a tendency to decline in quality over time, in the absence of conscious action to upgrade them. This is because the most successful, action-oriented people will tend to become impatient with their most stagnant, stick-in-the-mud friends and eventually drop them. Few action-oriented people can stomach having stagnant, slow movers and non-movers in their social circles. So eventually all you'll be left with are the complacent friends who tolerate your complacency. Maybe you like having friends who accept you as you are. It's better for your growth, however, to recruit friends who will hold you to the standard of who you want to become. Those friends can still accept you where you are; they just want to see you keep moving. I, for one, prefer friends who keep learning, growing, and evolving each year. Those friends inspire me. The ones who doubt their value to me only do so because they've been holding back on sharing their value with the world. And of course when I start doubting my value to certain friends, it's because I'm becoming too complacent and need to speed up as well.

Much of the time, the main influence that other people have on you may be behavioral. You'll pick up quality habits from people with high standards. But sometimes the influences may be epigenetic as well. Your body may block or unblock the expression of certain genes in response to your environment, so choose your environment carefully. If you don't like your current environment, change it.

I recently had my DNA sequenced (via 23andMe). This gave me a detailed report about my genes and what is currently known about them. For instance, my report says that I'm much less likely than the average person to succumb to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases. But I'm more genetically likely to get colon cancer. I was pleased to see that in the situations where I have a greater likelihood of disease from a genetic standpoint, my vegan diet, statistically speaking, gives me far more protection than my genes hurt me. Colon cancer risk decreases significantly on a plant-based diet, and this effect may be partly due to epigenetics. The foods you eat help to determine which genes are expressed vs. inhibited.

I also have a gene that could encourage me to smoke more than the average smoker, if I were to smoke at all. I've never smoked a cigarette or cigar -- it seems like a foul, disgusting habit to me -- so due to my lifestyle, this particular gene expression never comes into play. But if I were to smoke someday, that gene could potentially coax me to smoke even more, thereby making it harder to quit. So if I ever did find myself smoking and wanting to quit, it would likely be helpful for me to cut off all ties with any smoker friends, at least temporarily, since I wouldn't want their negative influence continuing to coax that gene into expressing itself. Instead I'd spend all my social time with nonsmokers and ex-smokers, in the hopes that their influence might encourage the blocking of that gene's expression. And of course their behavioral influence would be helpful as well.

The main lesson I get from the combo of social behavior and epigenetic influences is that we're all in this together. Like it or not, we all affect each other. Collectively we impact our environment, and that environment influences not only our habits and behaviors but also the deeper expression of our DNA.

While you can always try to surge ahead in your performance as an individual, social and environmental realities can't be ignored. These realities need to be intelligently considered as part of your path of growth. For starters it makes sense to deliberately surround yourself with positive influences, including people with qualities you admire. It also makes sense to avoid the negative epigenetic influences that are already known. For instance, it is known that ingesting even small amounts of polyphenols, which are commonly found in recyclable plastic food containers (including water bottles and sandwich bags), encourages the expression of obesity-inducing genes.

Don't succumb to the delusion that you can race ahead on your own and leave the rest of the world behind. Eventually that social drag will come into play.

Consequently, one of the most selfish things you can do is to invite other people to join you on your journey of personal growth. I've been doing that for many years now, and it's been wonderful to see how many positive ripples have been created by that simple decision. It's very rewarding to see conscious growth becoming more mainstream with each passing year. I love being a part of this evolution with so many other growth-oriented, practical people.

I also continue to pay attention to the immersion factor. I still need to carefully manage the social influences I allow to become dominant in my life, making sure that I spend sufficient time with people I respect and admire -- people who light me up and also challenge me, people who have higher standards than I do in some areas of life, people who may even help to switch on the expression of dormant strengths that I never knew I possessed.

One of the simplest and most accessible ways I inject these influences into my life is through books and audiobooks. When I feel that my life is becoming a little stale and I want to speed things up, I often buy a half-dozen new books and digest them quickly. My favorite books are biographies, both of individuals and businesses, especially from people who seem to have significantly higher standards than I do in some area of life.

I encourage you to do the same. Don't let yourself be dragged down by a weak social circle or an environment festering with low standards. Take charge of what you allow to influence you. Start by reading some of the greatest books you can find -- bare minimum one book per week.

Dive into new social situations where you feel like the baby of the group, the newcomer, the awkward novice. If your social circle doesn't make you feel a little uncomfortable, you're probably being socially lazy. You'll often find that just being around positive, healthy, successful people does something to you. It may not be anything they directly say or do. You may feel energized due to the action of some still-to-be-understood biological process. A single meeting could leave you feeling full of energy and excitement afterwards, explosively pursuing some new goal with renewed excitement. Maybe it's just the behavioral influence. Then again, maybe something much more basic and biological was finally switched on. :)

Please follow me on Twitter and Google+ for inspirational messages and quick updates.

Steve Recommends

Until next time, live consciously!

This newsletter is uncopyrighted. Feel free to share it, such as by forwarding it to friends or by posting it on your blog.
www.StevePavlina.com